Hello and welcome to rock and roll politics, the podcast where we delve deep and contextualize and think through consequences in the wild world of politics with me, Steve Richards.

Thank you for tuning in. And we've got a lot to cram in in our time together. I now wonder how we managed without a second podcast because there are some brilliant emails.

And in this second podcast, we focus more on one or two emails that trigger discussions in the rock and roll politics cooperative,

related, of course, to current events.

So we're going to look in a moment via emails at the implications of the US

security paper that came out earlier this week with some brilliant reflections on that.

Beforehand, though, I've got to reveal high drama at the Rock and Roll Politics Live show

at King's Place earlier this week with the

prediction. I asked the audience to predict, but you can guess what the theme of the prediction was

at the end of this particular year. I asked the audience to predict whether Kirstama would still

be Prime Minister in a year's time.

And remember this is a prediction, not what you want to happen, but what you think will happen.

And to my surprise, in the hall, around three quarters predicted he would still be

Prime Minister in a year's time and a quarter that he wouldn't be. Now, the live stream,

those who had bought the live stream tickets, it was closer, quite a bit closer, but still a

majority predicting he will be there in a year's time. For sure, what is going to be the case in the coming weeks and months is that the

speculation will not subside. And to some extent, that speculation feeds on itself for one reason.

Much of the mood in British politics is and has been for some time determined by the state of

opinion polls. And if Labour's ratings and Kirstama's ratings remain as dire as they are,

this speculation will continue. It's very interesting looking at when prime ministers fall and the set of circumstances

that have to be in place to bring it about. And it is complicated. And the great audience at King's Place,

thank you for coming. We had a great night, I think, he says. Maybe everyone hated it.

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